A majority of the cash market continued to fall Wednesday, and for a change the Rockies joined in the overall price movement direction. The continuing lack of substantive cooling load in what normally is a time of high power generation demand and prior-day screen weakness again depressed the market.

However, the fact that most of Wednesday’s losses were in single digits — following two days in which double-digit drops had dominated — and several non Rockies points were flat to about a nickel higher indicated that cash bearishness was subsiding to some extent. It also kept mixed daily price movement in vogue.

Declines ranged from 2-3 cents to about 35 cents. The Rockies, which had tended to exhibit the greatest price firmness in the face of overall softness during the previous three trading sessions, saw most of Wednesday’s largest drops. It wasn’t hard to see why. The heat levels that had been sustaining Rockies is going away quickly. Denver and Cheyenne, WY, which were expected to experience Wednesday highs of 97 and 90, respectively, are forecast to see those peak temperatures drop 13 degrees each Thursday.

Thursday’s cash trading will have a small amount of screen support after the August natural gas futures contract finally managed a rally of 6.2 cents Wednesday.

Temperatures are starting to creep a little higher in the Northeast and eastern South, but will still be relatively mild Thursday with most highs on either side of 90 degrees. A cold front that quelled high heat levels in the Upper Plains Wednesday was moving on to the Midwest and will limit highs in that region to the low to mid 80s in most cases.

An indicator of weather fundamentals remaining essentially bearish came from The Weather Channel, which said thunderstorms are possible in 38 states. Naturally that would bring cooling rains to areas that might have been warming up. Houston is an example; after an expected high of 90 Wednesday, scattered thundershowers are due to limit the city to about 86 Thursday.

Barring any fantastic upsurge by August futures Thursday and Friday, which doesn’t appear to be in the cards, August first-of-month cash indexes will take big plunges. The July contract expired at $6.929, just over a dollar above the August contract’s close of $5.925 Wednesday.

“That’s a good question,” laughed a West Coast trader when asked whether the mini-rally at Nymex gave the cash market a chance of doing the same Thursday. He said he really didn’t have any feel for which way prices will go.

The trader’s company isn’t doing any August business yet, he said. Wednesday was pretty quiet, he said, adding “We’re just trying to square our trading position for the rest of the month.”

The National Weather Service (NWS) missed rather badly with last week’s six- to 10-day forecast for the current week’s above-normal temperatures, which turned out to be seasonal to below-normal in many cases. But in its outlook for the July 30-Aug. 3 workweek, the federal agency predicted above-normal temperatures throughout the Northeast and Midwest, along the upper edge of the South and in the Plains as far west as the southeastern corner of Idaho. It also expects above-normal readings in the southwestern half of Nevada and all of California except its northern and southern ends. NWS looks for below-normal conditions in the lower two-thirds of the South from South Carolina through most of Texas and New Mexico (exceptions where normal temperatures are due are the lower two-thirds of the Florida peninsula, the Texas Panhandle and the northeastern corner of Mexico). NWS also predicted below-normal readings in northwest Oregon and the western two-thirds of Washington state.

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